due to prudence and personal abstinence. Like so many other great Islamic scholars (such as al-Shafi’i and al-Bukhari), he refused to accept money or gifts from the rulers of his time just in case they happened to come from an unlawful source. Instead he lived on income from a small rented apartment he owned. When he ran out of money, which he did regularly, he used to skip meals. On one occasion he became so desperate that he could not afford to replace his old and worn out clothes but, when the locals offered to buy him new ones, he politely refused. Since his poverty and deprivation was self-imposed, Ahmad maintained his self-respect and dignity by not accepting anything without paying for it. Only when his situation became very desperate, did he accept small amounts of money, but always on the condition that he repaid it later. His sincerity, simplicity and profound insight into Islamic teachings made him very popular with the masses in Baghdad.
He lived at a time when Mu’tazilism (or philosophical rationalism) became the dominant creed of the Abbasid Empire under the stewardship of Caliph al-Ma’mun. As a champion of rationalism, the Caliph and his immediate successors (Caliphs Mu’tasim Billah and Wathiq) not only turned Mu’tazilism into an official creed of the State, they also imposed it on the people by force. After a Caliphal decree was issued which stipulated that all the scholars in Baghdad had to subscribe to the Mu’tazilite creed and anyone who refused to do so would be severly chastised, Ahmad’s life was suddenly turned upside down. Since the Mu’tazilites believed that the Qur’an was created (contrary to the traditional Islamic view, which stated that the Qur’an was the uncreated Word of God), many traditional Islamic scholars flatly refused to accept the Caliphal decree. But when these scholars were threatened with severe chastisment by the ruling Abbasid elites, most of them pretended to subscribe to the Mu’tazilite creed in order to save their skins. Only a handful of scholars continued to defy the Caliphal decree – and Ahmad was one of them. When the Caliph eventually ordered all the defiant scholars to be brought to his palace in chains, they all relented save one. That indomitable scholar was Ahmad ibn Hanbal.
Chained from head to toe, he was brought before Caliph Mu’tasim Billah who questioned him about his beliefs and convictions for more than four days and urged him to change his views, but Ahmad remained firm. The battle between Islamic traditionalism and philosophical rationalism was now truly engaged. When it became abundantly clear that Ahmad would not recant, his tormentors threatened him with severe chastisement but he remained defiant. Ahmad was then beaten until the whip broke into two pieces, before being dragged before the Caliph for more questioning; but again he refused to budge an inch. The Caliph then ordered more punishment. This time he was tortured so severely that eye-witnesses said even an elephant would not have been able to endure such treatment. Yet Ahmad remained as firm as ever, refusing to bow before the scourge of rationalism, which at the time was threatening to undermine the very foundation of Islam.
His courage and bravery in the face of such barbarism even won over his erstwhile opponents.
As expected, soon his name and fame spread across the Islamic world like a wildfire, and his peers lavished much praise on him for keeping the flame of Islamic traditionalism alive. So much so that one renowned scholar of the time remarked, ‘When you find someone setting his affections on Ahmad ibn Hanbal, then know that he is a follower of the Prophet’s tradition.’ Ahmad continued his struggle against the Mu’tazilites until, in 847, Mutawakkil ala Allah ascended the Abbasid throne and reversed his predecessor’s harsh policies. The new Caliph also freed Ahmad from captivity so he could resume his normal activities. During this period he wrote numerous books on hadith and fiqh including his famous al-Musnad, which contains more than thirty thousand ahadith and a large selection of views and opinions of the Prophet’s companions about different aspects of Islam.
Ahmad ibn Hanbal died and was buried in Baghdad at the age of around seventy- seven. After his death, a new school of Islamic legal thought emerged named after him. The hanbali madhhab is today followed mainly in Palestine and Saudi Arabia, but his religious ideas and thoughts have influenced generations of influential Islamic scholars and reformers like Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah, Ibn Kathir, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, Sayyid Ahmad Barelvi and Haji Shari’atullah of Bengal among others.
THE QUR’AN CONSTANTLY exhorts Muslims to study history and explore the past; indeed, a large portion of the Divine revelation consists of information and data about the past. The stories of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Joseph, David, Mary and Jesus are all related in considerable detail to encourage people to ponder over, and learn lessons from the past. The Qur’anic exhortations inspired the early Muslims to record historical information in a meticulous way. Like people of other ancient civilisations, Muslims not only wrote history, they also played a pivotal role in the progress and development of historiography as a subject. As ancient Greek historians like Herodotus of Halicarnassus considered history to be a mere sequence of events, they did not conduct a rigorous scrutiny of their data to sift the wheat from the chaff in order to ascertain the authenticity of their source material. Nor did they seek to decipher the underlying causes of historical events or identify the factors which lead to the progress or decline of human society. The root causes of historical progress eluded the ancient historians until the Muslims pioneered historicism (or the science of historical inquiry). The father of the philosophy of history, and one of the most influential historians of all time, was Ibn Khaldun.
Abd al-Rahman ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Khaldun was born in Tunis (in present-day Tunisia) into a family of distinguished politicians and civil servants. Of Yemeni origin, Ibn Khaldun’s family members settled in Tunis in 1248 and became prominent figures in Andalusian and North African politics and public affairs. However, his father chose to pursue academic research rather than become a politician. As a noted scholar of Arabic language, literature, Islamic jurisprudence, hadith, Sufism and poetry, he supervised his son’s early education at home and ensured that young Ibn Khaldun learned the whole Qur’an by heart while he was still in his early teens. He then studied Arabic grammar and literature, before pursuing traditional Islamic sciences. Ibn Khaldun excelled in his studies and completed intensive training in Arabic grammar, theology, aspects of Islamic mysticism and specialised in the fiqh of the maliki madhhab (or Islamic jurisprudence as interpreted by Malik ibn Anas of Madinah) under the guidance of leading maliki scholars of the time. He combined his studies in Islamic sciences (ulum al-din) with a thorough training in the philosophical sciences (ulum al-aqliyyah) including metaphysics, logic, mathematics, philosophy and aspects of medicine. Ibn Khaldun’s extensive training in both the Islamic and philosophical sciences not only expanded his intellectual horizon, it also sharpened his mind in a powerful way. Raised in a politically active family and having also received a thorough education in the religious and philosophical sciences of his day, he was able to transcend the superficial and observe things as they were in reality. Since he was a talented student, he liked to question and analyse received wisdom; indeed, his intellectual questioning and curiosity enabled him to understand and grasp things which others failed to see. Not surprisingly, he became one of the most profound and insightful observers of human behaviour and society in the annals of history.
Although Ibn Khaldun continued his formal education until he was about eighteen, his education was frequently interrupted by a combination of natural and man-made disasters and calamities. On one such occasion a significant part of the Muslim world was ravaged by a deadly plague; this epidemic wreaked havoc across the Islamic world and virtually decimated the population of Tunis. Ibn Khaldun lost his parents, close relatives and teachers during this harrowing period in the history of North Africa. This left the twenty-year-old Ibn Khaldun rather lonely and isolated. Devastated by his loss, he turned down the offer of a civil service job and went to Fez, which at the time was one of North Africa’s most prosperous and thriving cities. Here he joined the civil service of Sultan Abu Inan, the ruling Marinid monarch, and pursued advanced training in Islamic and philosophical sciences under the tutelage of the city’s leading scholars. By combining his studies with Government employment, he gained direct access to high-ranking
